


Through the Looking Glass (and What Foggy Found There)

by MomentumDeferred



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Accidents, Alternate Universes, Brief Exploration of Alternate Universes, Episode: s01e10 Nelson v. Murdock, Foggy Is So Important And Hasn't Got A Clue, Gen, Gore, Hospitals, I might actually be a bad person, Isolation, Matt dies a lot, Near Death Experiences, Suicide, Supernatural - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 18:57:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4191225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MomentumDeferred/pseuds/MomentumDeferred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because really, it'd be Foggy's luck to get flattened by a bus immediately after leaving Matt's apartment.  He could say stranger things had happened, but after finding out his blind best friend goes around at night kicking the crime out of people, he can't really be too surprised.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through the Looking Glass (and What Foggy Found There)

 

The door to apartment 6A shuts with a hollow sound, like the last swing of a dying clock's pendulum. Foggy starts down the stairs, not looking back, not pausing. If he did that, he'd end up going right back to that stupid, idiotic, stubborn, _stupid_ son of a bitch, and, well, he _really_ didn't want that. He didn't know what he'd say. He didn't know if he could say anything worse than he already had.

  
Guilt grabs at him, _He needs you he needs you why are you leaving him like this why are you walking away_ , but he shoves it away, repeatedly, shaking his head as if he could physically force the thoughts from his brain.

  
_Why why why why why why._

  
Foggy reaches the bottom floor in record time, faster than he had months ago when he helped Matt move in and he realized way too late that he'd lost his phone somewhere between the street and the apartment. It'd been buzzing in the lobby. The memory cuts at him and his mind's screaming, _He's up there right now falling apart you heard him crying you piece of shit_ , and he rubs his face hard. Hot tears come away on his palm.

  
The air of New York at night, cold and sharp, breathes over him. The dampness on his face goes colder, and he rubs his skin dry, but the tears come right back.

  
_Why why why. Why did he hide this why couldn't he trust me why is he so stupid why is he my_ friend--

"Fuck," he hisses to himself. Out, out, out, he snaps silently at that screeching voice in his head. _What do I do? What do I do?_ He has nowhere, really, to go. The office. His apartment, as cramped and cluttered as it is, very much unlike the yawning dark of that corner apartment above him, but far emptier. He had to talk to someone. He had to work this out.

_Brett. Tell Brett. Tell him everything._

He clenches his fist, fingernails digging so hard into his palm they might have cut, forcing that idea out of himself. He couldn't do that. He couldn't damn Matt to the police, _They're all in Fisk's pocket_ , they'd tear Matt apart before he even stepped foot inside a jail cell and Foggy would be right behind him _guilty by association_ and no, that wasn't an option at all.

_Tell Karen._ Karen couldn't know. Of everyone, she deserved the least to be pulled down by the fiery train wreck that Matt's life had apparently become. Matt was the conductor, but Foggy was right there, shoveling coal into the damned engine. Karen was just some innocent passenger trying to get to Jersey.

_I'm a fucking idiot. Why am I still here? Why was I ever here? Why did he lie? Why did I fall for all of it? Why did he even go into law if this stupid shit was what he wanted to do? Why couldn't he stay away? Why couldn't he have just been a normal broken_ blind _guy--_

  
Foggy jolts back to reality at some harsh vibration gnawing at the soles of his feet. He lifts his head. Realizes too late that he'd stepped out into the street, blindly walking, _blindly unlike his liar asshole prick of a best friend_ , not paying attention--

He looks to his left. The bus hits him head-on.

\---

Thoughts. Slow and sluggish and dark, like shadows in the deep sea.

_Dead? Am I dead?_

_Where am I?_

_It's cold._

He opens his eyes. Or, his equivalent of eyes. He's not too sure what he's got right now. Everything is fuzzy, layered underneath sheets of something that's a lot like plastic but probably isn't. It might be made of light and confusion.  
"What?" he says, or wants to say, but no sound comes out. It's in his head, only. _What? Where am I?_

High windows. Panes of glass that didn't match in color. The flicker of an electronic billboard. The _hum_ of an electronic billboard. Wood floors. Vaulted ceiling. Shitty furniture.

Apartment 6A.

_Why am I here?_

To his utter shock, he receives an answer. He doesn't know where the answer's coming from. It might be himself.

_To see._

_What?_   Foggy wants to huff, grumble in confusion, but nothing comes out. He forces his lips to move and his throat to work.  "What?" He isn't certain that he actually makes noise.

_You're here to see._   Where is that voice coming from? It was either all around him, or inside him. He's too disoriented to tell, but just oriented enough to shake his head.  He can't feel his hair swing around like it should.

"I don't want to see."

_You have to see._

He really didn't want to, but he couldn't shut his eyes. Did he even have eyes? He hasn't been able to answer that question yet. "What is it?" he asks, eventually, quietly. Afraid to hear the answer. The sight of the apartment is frightening enough.

_What you wanted._

Foggy isn't sure what he actually wanted in the first place. Everything before this faded image of Matt's apartment seems to have happened a long time ago. He tries to swallow; isn't sure he has a throat, tries to shift his feet; isn't sure he has those, either. The apartment swims before him. Focuses suddenly into harsh, cutting clarity, like a TV finally tuned to the correct channel.

It's quiet. Clean. No splinters on the floor. The bedroom door is intact, half-open. It's past dark, he can't tell the time. The light of the advertisement outside the window shifts from blue to red. Glitters along the edge of a forgotten glass on the coffee table, sitting next to a closed laptop.

A form curled up on the couch, asleep. Still in the clothes he wore to work. He'd sat on the couch and worked until he couldn't anymore, then just slumped over and that's where he still is; the earbud's still faintly processing the screen reader and it's still stuck in his ear. It feels too familiar. Foggy's seen this before, just not right here. Just not right now. Whenever _now_ is.

"Matt?"

_Won't hear you._

Foggy moves, but not on his feet, he doesn't know how he's doing it. Leans in close. Yeah, the bastard's asleep, face tilted toward the windows, skin surprisingly unmarred by cuts or bruises. Where is he? _When_ is he?

_Last night. You're here last night._

"Why isn't he...?" Dressed like an idiot? Getting his stomach slashed half open by a blade on a chain? Beat all to hell, like he had been for the past two weeks before his shoddily-built house of cards came crashing down all around them?

_It's what you wanted._

"Is it?" Foggy can't remember what that could be. He thinks, but while he's thinking, he hears something else, footsteps on the stairs outside. Matt continues to sleep, as if he can't hear them. But Foggy can, and he turns to go to the door and look, but then he's in the stairwell, and he can see them as if he stood right in front of them. Four guys, one with a scarred face. He doesn't recognize them. He turns back to go to the apartment door and everything shifts and he's back in front of Matt, who hasn't shifted at all. "Wake up," he says, knowing he can't be heard.

His voice doesn't wake Matt up, but the scarred man pounding on his front door does. He jerks awake, glancing around blearily with eyes that don't work, then pushes himself back into a sitting position. Tugs the earbud out. Feels at the watch on his wrist. "Foggy?" he calls, to the door, voice slurring in half-sleep.

Foggy doesn't answer. The door pounds again.

Matt paws at his face. Carefully feels forward for the table, then gets to his feet. Foggy watches. Matt should have known it was there. Was he drunk? No, he's walking way too steadily. The empty glass on the table hadn't held alcohol.

"Just a second," Matt mumbles to the door as he stumbles on the edge of his rug. Not drunk. But definitely not like Matt. Foggy watches, and watches. Matt should be able to tell that whoever is behind the door isn't Foggy at all, isn't Foggy or Karen or Brett or his neighbor Fran or anyone that either of them know. But Matt just goes to the door, sighing, feeling for the deadbolt before pulling it back. He tugs the door open a few inches. The second lock, the chain one, stops the door there.

"Foggy?" he asks again, and goes very still as the scarred man speaks.

"Mister Murdock." Some sort of accent. German?

Matt recoils immediately. There's something in his voice, something high and tight. Stress. Fear. He's trying to hide it, trying so hard to hide it, but Foggy knew, Foggy had known him for far too long to not know what it sounded like. "Can I help you?" He's afraid. He's really, really afraid. Suddenly, so is Foggy.

There's a reason for that, apparently, because the scarred man lifts a leg and kicks the door in, snapping the chain off at the doorframe. Matt's already running, tripping on the rug again-- _he should have known that was there, why didn't he?_ \-- going for his phone sitting on the kitchen counter. He gets a hand on it, claws at the screen, gets it unlocked, but the scarred man is already on top of him, knocking it from his hand with a single blow that sends it skittering, shattered, under the couch. The man's other fist, a big heavy thing, connects with Matt's temple and knocks Matt straight to the kitchen floor, where he scrambles against the faded wood, pushing himself back against the island.

"You are digging into things that you should not," the scarred man says. Heavy accent again. Russian, definitely. "We are here to fix that."

Matt is panting, terrified. Foggy wants to vomit, but can't locate his digestive system. He watches his best friend-- _blind best friend_ \-- lift his arms in defense. Matt doesn't do that. Matt's never done that. He's never been one to submit, to flinch, to cower. But it's what Foggy is seeing.

"Get him, Matt," he finds himself saying and not-saying. "Get up and kick his ass!" That's why they'd fought in the first goddamn place! Because this asshole could punch like his dad! _Because he was a stupid idiot that ran around jumping on roofs, fighting people!_

Matt doesn't, though. Not this time. Foggy isn't sure he knows who he's looking at. Matt swallows a few times, tries to speak. "Union Allied--" is all he gets out, before the scarred man swings out, hard, knocking Matt back down to the floor, where he yelps, again trying to scrabble away, but the Russian stops him with a hard kick. And then another. And then another.  
Foggy watches all four of them gang up on his best friend, who doesn't fight back. Who can't fight back. Who is just a regular blind man, unable to hear heartbeats or smell two-day-old onions or land any punches with unerring accuracy.

_This isn't what he wanted._

A whisper in his ear, in his brain, all around him, pulsing through the brick walls, chasing after the sounds of violence and screaming. Matt crying for help. Nobody answering.

_This is what you asked for._

He watches as Matt manages to get to his feet, limping, desperate, hands dancing uncoordinated over the kitchen counter in an attempt to steady himself, leaving smears of blood on the cheap plastic surface. And there is blood, dripping from his nose and mouth and somewhere under his shirt. He's panting, high whines of pain coming from somewhere deep in his throat, pure terror, like a trapped animal.

Foggy is reminded of the noise Matt made when he walked out of his apartment. When was that? Hours ago? Seconds ago? Years ago?

Matt staggers out into the living room. The men follow, four extra shadows in an apartment built of them. He's looking for something-- his phone-- but he's not going to find it because it's under his couch, broken. He's trying to call for help. Trying to save his own life.

He stumbles at one of the armchairs, nearly falling flat on top of it, but his hands land on something smooth, white-- his cane-- and he wraps his fingers around it, bloodied as they are, and Foggy thinks maybe what would happen next would be something he'd expect more from his best friend. Maybe it would all turn around. Maybe this was just a ruse.

It's not. Foggy, again, wants to vomit with his nonexistent stomach. Matt fights back, because even though he's just been beaten against his own kitchen island by four men, he's still Matt. He's still his father's son. He gets two swings in, at least a good glancing blow on the scarred man, before the cane's ripped from him. And he is punished severely for it.

They throw him against the bedroom door. It shatters.

They throw him against his stairs. The bottom one splinters.

They toss him into his coffee table. The empty glass shatters and the wood splinters. He's sobbing, bleeding everywhere, and it looks like his stomach has been slashed half open by a blade on a chain, and his breathing sounds like he's got blood in his lungs, and he might just.

"Please," he's crying, _begging_ , Foggy can't believe what he's hearing, "please stop. Please. I'm sorry. Don't kill me. Please don't kill me." Matt stammers over every word. He's still trying to get away, cowering against the bottom lip of the couch. "I can't-- I can't do anything, I'm just a lawyer, Jesus Christ, _please_ \--"

And he is. Matt is just a lawyer. He can't hear crying from blocks away. He can't feel the vibrations of dropped phones through six floors of apartment building, _Foggy, are you sure you didn't drop it in the lobby_ , he can't do anything because all he has is his cane and his Braille and his screen reader--

Two more kicks. The second connects with his throat. There's a very strange noise. Like fingers caught in a car door. Matt's breathing changes immediately, and every inward pull suddenly becomes a monumental struggle. A terrible, hollow rattle. His forehead is pressed against the carpet, fingers twitching against the empty air of the floor underneath him. He can't get up.

"You made a mistake, involving our employer."

Matt shudders against the floor, trying to breathe. He can't get air in. Somehow he just can't figure it out. Blood's bubbling from between his lips, frothy pink. He tries to talk. He can't. His eyes roll around worthlessly in his head.

One of the men leans toward the scarred one. Probably the leader. They speak, in Russian of course, slow and deliberate. The scarred one stares down at Matt. Laughs.

"His partner will find him."

And then, they leave. They walk away, while Matt struggles on the floor, clawing weakly at the carpet, at his own neck, breaths coming in and out with short, incomplete noises. It sounds like they start down his throat but stop before they hit his lungs. He tries to get up, but can't. There's blood all over. Dribbling from his mouth, no longer pink, now it's dark and thick. It pools on the floor underneath him, and he can't move anymore, face pressed against the soaked carpet, into the blood, and he can't get himself out of the growing puddle. He's drowning.

Foggy can't move, either. Can't move. He can only watch. He really wants this to be over. He doesn't even know what this is. Hell, is what he can only assume.

Matt gives a final try, trying to heave himself up, but his arm's twisted in a strange direction and it bends into an even stranger shape and collapses underneath him. He can't even make a noise of pain; everything's stopped up where his throat's been crushed. His face is covered in blood. The advertisement outside the window shifts. Red and blue, yellow, brown, brown and blue, white. He's staring out into air he'd never see, somewhere near Foggy's shoulder, but he can't see him because he can't see anything.

Matt goes slowly still. His breathing grinds to an uneven halt. The advertisement changes again. Yellow, yellow, yellow, red, green. Foggy watches the light dance over the crumpled body laying among the broken pieces of the coffee table, brothers in arms.

"Foggy. Foggy. Foggy."

Matt's phone. Still under the couch. It sounds off over and over. Matt never moves. He'll never move again.

This is Hell, then. Should have gone to church with Matt.

Foggy hears something out in the hall of the apartment, and he doesn't know how long he's been watching his friend grow cold on the floor. The voice outside is familiar. It's himself. Drunk. He remembers this moment. He remembers saying these words, but it's not him. It's another Foggy, who looks the same and sounds the same and acts the same, stumbling up to Matt's open door, staring dumbly at the splinters on the floor where it'd been broken down. He walks inside, takes in the damage to the apartment. It's familiar but it's not, it's deja vu but it's the dream of another man. It's both. It's everything. It's his entire existence.

"Matt?" The other Foggy steps inside. Finds his friend on the floor. Panics, screams, rolls him over, but it's far too late now. There's nothing there anymore, just the broken pieces of the crippled body that held his best friend. He's crying, wailing. Like the bleat of a wounded animal. Like Matt had, minutes-- _hours? Days?_ \-- before, begging for his life, bleeding out by himself in his apartment. Drowning in his own blood. Alone, alone, alone. Scared and alone.

"No, no, no no nono, nononononono." It's a loop. It doesn't stop. And Foggy watches, because he can't do anything else. He doesn't think he's allowed to do anything else.

_This is what you wanted._ That voice. It's in his ears, his chest, everywhere.

"No. No it isn't."

_'Why couldn't he have been a normal broken blind guy?'_

Somehow, the voice repeats his own thoughts back to him. It feels like a layered, permanent memory. Burned into every inch of him. He can't be rid of it.

"I didn't want him to die."

_What_ did _you want?_

"I don't know. I don't want him to die."

_He did. You just saw it._

"I want to go back."

_You can't, now._

"Am I dead?"

Buzzing silence of a void left behind from whatever that voice was, but it isn't really silence because he can hear _everything else_. He watches the other Foggy scream into his cellphone. Matt gazes up at him, an empty reprimand. _No ambulance, no hospital, call Claire._ Memories blur and mix and heave together. Blood and gauze and the light of a phone and the hum of a passing car and the roar of a dying city. The strangled sounds of his dying friend.

_We don't live in a world that's fair. We live in this one._

Do we?

\---

He's in a hospital waiting room. Not one of the communal ones, where families wait while their sons and daughters and fathers and mothers get blood tests or x-rays. This is a tiny one. Two chairs, a single table. A bad one.

Matt's there with Karen. He's sitting in one of the chairs, cane leaned against his shoulder as he slumps. The door's just shut. Because the doctor's just left. Foggy didn't hear what he said. But Matt did.

Because Matt's slumping down further, face twisted in pain. An agony well beyond anything that had yet happened to him. Foggy wonders how much pain a man could take before dying of it. Matt's pulled off his glasses and nearly crushes them in his hand but Karen takes them with a soothing hush and puts them on the table.

Matt sobs. It's awful. It's more painful than what Foggy heard before walking out of his apartment. It's more painful than what Foggy heard after. He sobs again, and it looks like he'd collapse to the floor if he didn't have his cane there.

Karen hushes him again, rubs his back. Matt just keeps crying. Heavy, shuddering, like every sob was a bullet ripping through his body. Hysterical. It makes him look like a stranger.  Foggy's never met this man.

"I can't," Matt says, or tries to, but everything's so warped by the sobbing that it's just a messy noise. "Foggy," he eventually makes out, and then Foggy understands. Because it wasn't Matt who was dying this time.

He watches his best friend just crumple. Matt comes out of the chair and ends up curled up against the wall and Karen's there, trying to sooth him, but she can't sooth anyone because she's crying just as hard. She clings to his back and he grips his cane like he wants to shatter it and just screams. He screams, and screams, and screams, until he can't anymore, and Foggy watches the whole thing, every stretching second. He watches until Matt's finally run out of energy, and has to be escorted out because he can't walk on his own.

Then, time shifts, blurs. There's a funeral. Matt's there with Foggy's family, with Karen, and he is pale, and says nothing, and looks nearly as dead as he did before, just without the blood.

Blur. Foggy feels like he's underwater. Shift. Matt's apartment.

Matt has a gun.

Matt ends up lying on the floor between his couch and the coffee table. Face down in blood, but Foggy didn't watch him drown in it this time. Karen doesn't come. Nobody comes. He watches as it takes three days for anyone to realize that something is wrong. Three days before someone notices the blind man in 6A hasn't collected his mail. He watches as two disinterested medical workers remove Matt's body from the apartment in a black bag. They talk about one-night stands. One of them takes a beer from Matt's fridge.

_Matthew Michael Murdock passed away October 20th, 2015. He leaves no survivors._

Nobody shows up to Matt's funeral.

_'Why is he my friend?'_

"I don't know."

_Don't you?_

\---

Foggy isn't immediately sure where he is now. There's a metal table underneath him, windows behind that with the blinds drawn. A very small room, but it's not the room from the hospital. He finally sees the curved form of a man in a chair, alone. It's Matt. Breathing heavily into the curve of his arm laying on the faded polish on the top of the table. A pair of handcuffs keeps it there, holds him where he sits.

The door next to the windows bursts open. Two police officers walk in. One of them Foggy doesn't know, but the other is Brett. They look at each other, then sit on the opposite side of the table.

Matt lifts his head slowly. He looks like he hasn't slept in a week. Maybe he hasn't.

"Hi, Brett," he manages, attempting a smile. His face is bloodied. It's not from that ninja or whoever he'd fought off That Night. Someone's gone at him, hard, and Foggy has his suspicions. The other cop's knuckles are split, and his smile is like a shark's.

"Matthew Murdock. You've been on with the wrong side of the law. And you of all people should know which side is the right side."

Matt lowers his head. "Yeah." Defeat. Defeat in his words and the slump of his body and the way his chained hand fidgets on the top of the desk. He's been caught. He's been outed. He's been arrested.

The cop-- the not-Brett cop-- laughs. "You have the right to remain silent."

Foggy knows these words. Matt knows these words. Matt does not seem surprised to hear them. He gazes at the top of the table. Other Cop snaps his fingers in Matt's face to get his attention.

"Look over here, asshole."

"I can't."

Brett's been absolutely silent. Pain is etched into his face. When he talks, it's very hesitant. He does not want to be here. "He's blind, man."

Other Cop just laughs. "No, he isn't. Playing you for a fool, Mahoney." He leans in close to Matt, that shark-smile still on his face. A smile that's tasted blood, expects more, _will absolutely get_ more. "Anything you say or do may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult an attorney before speaking to us and to have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you."

"I don't want an attorney." Mat's voice catches on these words. His eyes flick around the top of the table, up the wall. They end up somewhere between the two windows and a far horizon.

"Not calling your little buddy for help, are you?"

"He..." Matt's eyebrows tighten. His gaze-- useless as it is-- ends up near Other Cop's face, at least. "He had nothing to do with this. He didn't know."

A loud laugh. Derisive. Matt flinches to hear it. "Yeah, that's going to be the most unbelievable fucking part. I'll trust that you're blind before I trust that fat prick didn't help you with this bullshit."

"He didn't know," Matt repeats. Liquid stirs in his eyes. "He didn't know."

Other Cop continues. His voice is bored. He doesn't want to prattle off the Miranda Warning at all. "If you decide to answer any questions now, you have the right to stop answering at any time until you talk to any fatass attorney you want. Knowing and understanding your rights as I have explained them to you, are you willing to answer questions without an attorney present?"

"I told you, I don't want a lawyer."

"Good." Other Cop leans back in his chair. Fiddles at something at his hip. "Brett, how beat up is this guy? Think anything else will even be noticeable?"

Brett's been quiet again. He looks pale. Shattered. Betrayal and disbelief have taken shelter on his face and don't seem to have the intent to leave. "Let's just question him, man." It's halfway a plea and halfway a prayer.

"He killed our guys in the alley, Mahoney. Forgive me for wanting a little retribution."

Matt lifts his head at this. "I didn't-- I can't even _shoot_ a g--"

Other Cop swings out with something that he's gotten from his hip. Ah, night stick. It cracks against Matt's temple and leaves him panting against the top of the table, blood beginning to drip down, and yeah, it's hard to tell if the blood's from an old injury or the new one.

"Assault of a suspect under custody," Matt breathes into the polished surface, eyes flicking around restlessly as he tries to figure out what he's supposed to do. "Excessive force."

"I'll show you what 'excessive force' is."

And again, with the nightstick. Matt grunts but does not scream. Will not give him the satisfaction. He stays silent by biting his tongue, gaze dancing around the room, and while his voice doesn't plead, Matt's always led with his face, and his expression is terrified and afraid.

He has no idea how expressive he is. How could he?

Other Cop momentarily stops when Matt's shuddering against the table, fingers twitching. Foggy doesn't even know how many times he's been hit. Other Cop leans forward and wipes off the baton on the collar of Matt's shirt. He lifts the baton again, but Brett stops him.

"Enough. Last thing you want is for him to die in here."

"Then get the hell out, Mahoney."

"I can't do that."

"I have jurisdiction. _Out_."

Brett looks torn in two. He lowers his head, stands, and leaves. Stays out in the hall, arms crossed to keep them from shaking. Foggy's out in the hall with him, still unseen. There's the unmistakable sounds of violence from inside. The cop's demanding information, about Foggy, about Karen. About Union Allied, about some other company, about Wilson Fisk. Matt doesn't fight back, doesn't talk.

He's trying to get Matt to give up Foggy most of all. He refuses. He refuses the first time it's demanded, and the second, and the third. It's not happening. _Stubborn, stubborn._

Silence.

The baton's striking again.

Matt finally does talk. His voice shakes out of him, a fragile thing. Somehow Foggy hears it as if Matt is right next to his ear and not behind a door in another room. 

"I'll die first."

So that, of course, is exactly what he does. Eventually the baton does what it was never meant to do, not in the hands of a member of the law enforcement, and he slips into a half-awake, unresponsive state, and doesn't talk ever again. Two minutes later, he starts seizing. Foggy listens to the handcuff jittering against the surface of the table. Brett stays silent in the hall.

It takes an hour for Other Cop to call for medical help. By then, Matt's slipped into unconsciousness, bleeding into his brain, requiring surgery, never receiving it. As he's being brought, too late, to the hospital, he falls into a coma. As he's being loaded into the building, he slips into something far darker and deeper. Never resurfaces.

Nobody shows up to his funeral, but a pair of cops show up two days after the dirt's settled. They get drunk and piss on his headstone. A week later, they've shattered it. Nobody bothers enough to give a shit.

_'Tell Brett.'_

"I didn't do that. I never wanted to do that."

_Didn't you?_

\---

"Excuse me, is this room 312?"

Columbia. Foggy's sat up on top of the headboard of the bed of another version of himself. Staring down at a familiar but unfamiliar laptop as his other self tries to get the last spot of a Punjabi class. Matt is at the door, face hopeful. This other version of Foggy doesn't even look up.

"Nope. 312 is across the hall."

"Oh, thanks."

Then it's over, and Matt's gone, hunting down the room he's actually assigned to. The other version of Foggy never really meets him. Sees him, of course, in classes, in the halls. They run into each other a few times. It's unremarkable.

"Whoops," other-Foggy says as he bumps into Matt in the hall one day. Sees the cane. Knows that there's a blind student somewhere in Columbia and puts the two together. "Sorry."

"No problem," the other Matt says, voice bright but face still and set. There's no real warmth there. He's here to learn and that's all. Nobody has bothered to get to know him, to study with him, to become friends with him. And he is seemingly okay with this, moving from class to class quietly, going back to his dorm in the evening, studying and studying and studying.

Everyone sees him graduating _summa cum laude_.

He doesn't. His social worker-- nobody even knew Matt had one, because he never talked to _anybody_ \-- finds him dead in his dorm room three weeks before graduation. Overdose, the coroner says. Severe depression, a doctor says. Seek help when you need it and you're never alone, the campus therapist says.

The other Foggy hears all this and apparently understands, in that vaguely accepting sort of way the real Foggy would read an obituary. 'Oh, he's dead? Yeah. People die. Life sucks.' It happens. Of course it does. And a blind kid without a family, struggling to keep his life together? Well, _then_ it's almost _expected_.

This time, Matt is cremated. His ashes are sent to a nun somewhere in Hell's Kitchen. Nobody ever hears his name again.

_'Why couldn't he just stay away?'_

"I don't want this," Foggy is screaming, _trying_ to scream, but it all comes out in a high, broken whisper. "Why are you showing me this?"

_You're here to see. Do you see?_

"Yes. _Yes_."

\---

The street outside of their office. It can't have been more than a few weeks ago, during that rainstorm, the one that hung around with a misty drizzle that just wouldn't go away. Foggy's pulling out his umbrella, shaking it open, while Matt stands off to the side with his cane, head tilted slightly upward, letting the rain hit him. The image is weirdly intimate, Foggy thinks, ignoring the sight of himself just a few feet away, trying to get the umbrella to lock in place.

"You're gonna catch a cold."

Matt huffs a laugh through his nose. "You don't get colds from water, Foggy." He stays where he is. The rain is starting to plaster his hair to his scalp.

"Yeah, yeah, don't come whining to me when you wake up with the sniffles."

It's a comfortable banter. Foggy can't remember having it. He thinks he remembers leaving earlier than Matt on this particular day, hurrying home, working on his laundry and watching something stupid on TV.

He is suddenly terrified of what he might be about to witness.

"Please stop showing me this," he pleads, trying to make sounds with his throat. He can't, and the growl of frustration won't come out either, and it rattles him even more. "I don't understand."

_Yes, you do._

He watches as the other Foggy finally gets the umbrella unfolded correctly-- he remembered that old piece of shit, something he'd had all through college and still used because whenever he could afford another one it was never raining so he never thought about it-- and starts down the street. Matt turns to follow, grabbing Foggy's elbow in that gentle way he always did, sharing the space of the umbrella with him.

Foggy is confused. This feels so uneventful. He follows as the two of them walk through the streets, talking quietly about a case, and then about lunch, and then about music, normal conversations that he can remember having a million times before.

He's about to ask again, in whatever way he's able to, he has no idea how that's supposed to work, when there's a screech and a chorus of car horns. A startled yell pierces the air, followed by the rev of an engine, more honking. Matt and Foggy have ground to a stop on the street corner, Foggy looking around wildly for the source of the noise, Matt also looking but without his eyes; with a sharp, concerned tilt of the head.

Foggy-- the real one, as real as he can feel in whatever situation this is-- sees it before they do, a Fedex truck, speeding out of control down the street. It knocks another car out of the way, and the driver gets it temporarily under control, but then a goddamn cement truck comes careening around the corner behind it, slamming it into a spin that sends it right in the direction of Matt and the other Foggy.

_7 Vehicle Pile-up Claims 4_ , was what the newspaper had said the next day.

Matt reacts first, of course he does, he probably heard the brakes of the very first car and was prepared. He grabs Foggy's arm, pulling him back away from the street, but no amount of heightened hearing would be able to predict that the Fedex truck's brakes would go out, sending the truck into a flip. The noise is immense.

Foggy-- real Foggy, at least he thinks he is, it's so hard to tell now-- watches. There's a millisecond where he can see the thoughts come in and out of Matt's head as he's adjusting, figuring it out, and then his face is suddenly set and he twists, shoving the other Foggy away as hard as he could, out of the way of the truck, and in the next second, a second that feels like an eternity, the truck slams into him from the side. Foggy knows he's dead before he even hits the ground, before his skull cracks open on the pavement.

The truck ends up half inside a bakery. The umbrella skitters across the road. A bent white cane rests in a puddle on the corner.

There's screaming, a lot of it. People, like animals, shrieking in horror, pain. One lady was struck further up the street and her daughter is holding her head, trying to keep the blood from draining out. A teenager's breathing his last underneath the cement truck.

Foggy's in the middle of the street with himself, holding Matt close, but his friend's body is broken and shattered, empty, and there's nothing he can do. There's nothing anyone can do. Bystanders come into the street to help, but they see the amount of blood pooling, the viscera, and they stop.

"Matty, Matty, no, no." This Foggy is screaming. He's in more pain than the injured young woman further up the street who's had her leg half ripped off. "Oh, no, Matty. Why'd you do that? Why'd you _do that...?_ "

There's a lot of people at his funeral this time. Karen cries so hard she throws up.

_7-Vehicle Pile-up Claims 5_ , says the newspaper. The five pictures of the victims are lined up at the bottom of the article in monochrome, black and white and so fucking weak compared to the lives they'd had.

_'Why was I ever here?'_

It's a good question. Foggy can barely remember asking it.

\---

College, again. It's different this time-- well, closer to the truth. The truth Foggy knows, anyway. The one he's come to see as his own. He doesn't know what all this is. His running theory is still Hell.

"Do you get the spins?"

Nighttime. Two friends, buzzed and laughing, sitting on concrete stairs, talking about nothing and everything. Foggy's behind them, watching.

"Yeah, I get the spins."

"Really?"

And this other Matt is explaining it, but it's not how Foggy remembers, because he stammers so much more, licks his lips, shivers with nerves. "...'Cause my senses are so..."

"Delicate?"

"...Well, it's... um. Can I... can I tell you something, Foggy?"

A laugh. "Of course you can."

"It's... can you keep a secret?" He's so afraid. Still shivering. Both of them are probably blaming it on the cold.

"I dunno, if it's about _girls_..."

Matt laughs, high and short. Terrified. "N-no, this is, this is serious, Foggy."

They both fall quiet. The humor has been sucked out of the air. Matt fidgets with his cane in his hands, and slowly starts explaining. He tells this Foggy everything. His hearing, his balance, his sense of smell. Everything that he told the real one-- _Am I even the real one? Am I just another one of these?_ \-- except far more afraid. For good reason.

The other Foggy sits and listens. His expression slowly twists into something that Foggy had only really seen in a mirror. It's not him. It doesn't look like him. This Foggy _isn't_ him.

When Matt's done, he continues to sit, waiting for a response, bouncing his cane on the step below. Foggy is sure he can hear his heartbeat, hammering in his chest, making him dizzier.

"You can hear _heartbeats_?"

"W-well, um, if I concentrate, um--"

The other Foggy shakes his head. Stands up. Leaves. Doesn't come back. Transfers out of his dorm the next day. Matt cries, and cries, but he knows he's made a mistake. Feels he deserves it, because he wasn't allowed to have friends. A man like him can't have friends. He knew their relationship would be temporary.

"I wouldn't have done that," Foggy says, to whatever's listening. "I wouldn't have done that to him."

_Wouldn't you?_

He doesn't get to see the ending of this.. iteration. He assumes, correctly, that it ends how the others have. With a body and a grave and nobody giving a damn.

_'Why did he lie? Why did I fall for it?'_

"This isn't fair. It's not fair. I want to go back."

_Back where?_

"Where I belong! Back with him."

_You can't go back. You made your decision._

"That wasn't me, just now. I wouldn't have walked away like that."

_Wouldn't you?_

Foggy's been going through the same loops of thoughts for ages now. Eons. The voice, whatever it was, whoever it was, continues its endless whisper. When it talks, it feels like it's been talking since the beginning of time, and when it's silent, it feels like it's never existed at all.

"I want to go back."

_Where?_

The repetition is maddening. He's roaring, silent and timeless. "Stop. _Stop!_ I just want this to _stop_." His own not-voice echoes back to him from corners he can't discern. "Take me back. I want to go back to him."

_You can't._

"Why? Am I dead?"

_Almost._

"What? When? Where?"

_There was a bus._

"Is this Hell?"

He doesn't recieve an answer, not from whatever's been speaking to him. Foggy's suspended, in sheets of light and things he can't describe and he just wants out. He just wants out.

He struggles. Pain slams him, in his chest and his back and his head.

He screams.

And in an instant, it all melts away. The image of dormitories and colleges and apartments fades, dissipates, and he can see stark white walls, so sharp and focused that they look less real than what he's just been witnessing. There's voices. Panicked.

"We got him. We got him."

A high beeping. Heart monitor.

"Stabilizing."

His eyes are open. A face drifts into view. He doesn't recognize it, but there's a mask on his face, a hospital mask. A doctor? The stranger says something, but he's suddenly so tired, and doesn't really want to listen.

He falls asleep.

\---

He wakes up.

It's slow, and torturous, climbing back to reality. _His_ reality. His blessed, damned, broken reality. He knows it, knows he's awake, can feel himself breathing, can feel that deep sharp pain still in his chest. Everything before feels like a dream, too long and too real, and shuttles quietly away to the back of his head as he's opening his eyes, focusing.

A hospital room. Wires all over him, his face, his arms. An IV line, attached reservoir dripping slowly, attached bag of fluids half-empty and clear. There's something written on it, but he doesn't care to read it.

He sees something else, too, or someone. Hunched over at the side of the bed, head resting on the edge. Breathing evenly in sleep. Foggy makes out the silhouette of a forehead and a rough mop of brown hair. Recognition snaps in place.

"Matt," he mumbles, shocked and elated that actual words came out of his mouth. He tries to laugh, but just coughs.

_This better be_ my _Matt_ , he hears himself yelling in his head.  The voice, whoever it was, or wasn't, doesn't answer.  The silence in his head is like heaven.

But then Matt's sitting up in half a second, wide awake, eyes flicking around rapidly as his brain worked out what was happening, and Foggy knew. He knew he was where he was supposed to be. There's still healing cuts on his friend's face, that drawn pallor of exhaustion and pain and something else. "...Foggy," he says, softly, hesitantly. He leans back from the bed, not touching him. Looking nervous, but not as nervous as how he'd looked in all those images that'd flashed in Foggy's head, already starting to crumble, and now Foggy's unsure any of that happened at all.

"You okay?"

Matt makes a strange sound. " _Me?_ You got hit by a _bus_ , Foggy."

_This is it, this is the right place, I got to go back._ "Did I?" _I got to go back._

"...In... in front of my apartment."

And then it returns. His memory of That Night comes crashing down like a red-tinged waterfall, like a Fedex truck in the rain, and he shudders. Matt, of course, notices, and carefully slides his chair back. As if he's a repulsive thing, an animal to be feared, something too dangerous to be touched.

"I'm sorry," he says, and his voice is very small. "You don't want me here. I'll go." He's still limping. He's still pale and Foggy isn't sure how long it's been since their fight. Matt looks about to collapse, either from exhaustion or emotion or a mixture of both. "I'll, um. I'll send Karen. Okay?"

Foggy's hand dances along the hospital blanket. "No," he manages, and swallows, and starts stronger. "No, no. Matt. Come here. Stay."

His friend-- his stupid idiotic stubborn stupid best friend-- stops in his tracks, shock plain across his expressive face, and turns back to the hospital bed. He looks terribly lost. But he's definitely _real_ , and he's definitely Foggy's. A thought slams him out of nowhere. 

_This is what I wanted. This is what I_ actually _wanted._

_Do it again.  Do it right this time.  Fix it._

"Stay," Foggy says again, and reaches out, and of course Matt can see it, or hear it, or however it works for him, and takes his hand, sitting back down on the chair, at Foggy's side. "Stay with me, Matt."

"...Of course." So afraid, so tentative. As if he thought this was a ruse, that Foggy would shove him away regardless, and was only doing this to make it hurt more. Matt grips his hand gently. Foggy doesn't know how he could do the things he does and still be so gentle, so careful. "How..." he swallows, eyes fixed at the blanket, looking like he was so afraid of making a wrong move that he decided he just wasn't going to move at all, "...how are you feeling?"

"My head hurts. Am I okay?"

Something passes across Matt's face. Foggy isn't sure what it is. "Yeah, they... they say you hit your head. P-pretty hard.  You had trouble breathing. Broke your femur. You've got a cast."

"Ah, that's why I don't feel like dancing."

Another something flits across Matt's face, just for a moment longer. He looks about to laugh, or cry, but relief fills his expression and stays there instead, clinging to Foggy's hand like a lifeline now. His eyes search the blanket uselessly for a long moment before he finally talks. "I'm... I'm sorry. For... you know. I'm sorry. Do you remember?"

"Yes. I remember."

Matt's face falls for a second. He's waiting for that axe to fall. The 'Yeah, I remember what you said, I remember what you did, I remember what we fought about, and I want nothing to do with you' axe. The worried expression stays as he gently-- and nervously, because the damn man can never keep those hands still-- runs a thumb along the top of Foggy's knuckles.

"...And?" It's a crack of sound only. Foggy wouldn't have heard it if he wasn't paying close attention.

"It's... it's okay."

"...It's okay?" Matt echoes, dumbly. It does not sound good on him.

Foggy frowns. He says what he knows Matt needs to hear, but would never, ever ask. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going to run out of your life, Matt. You know I wouldn't."

Something on his friend's face tells him he doesn't, really, and his expression twists for half a second before he gets everything back under control again, stops himself from bursting into tears in a damn hospital room. "Okay," is what he manages to say, reaching up with his other hand to layer it over the first. "You sure?"

What a strange question. After what he'd been through? "Of course I'm sure."

Then he understands. Matt was giving him another door, another chance to escape. Like he knew it would come to this. Like he knew Foggy would be trying to get out of this bizarre, dangerous situation, with this bizarre, dangerous man, and his bizarre, dangerous problems. He takes a deep breath. He's been thinking of these words for a long time. "I... uh. I can't do this. Without you. Alone." His voice shakes. It sounds like he's revealing his worst, deepest secret. What could be worse than putting on a mask and beating the shit out of people at night?

Foggy scoffs. It hurts his throat. He doesn't care. "Not leaving you alone, you prick." He flexes his fingers, and Matt's grip tightens. A weak smile creeps across his face, settles momentarily around his unfocused eyes, and then is gone. "You're stuck with me. Too bad."

Matt bends his head. "...'Kay," he mumbles, mostly under his breath. How could a man live like he has? Knowing he didn't-- couldn't-- belong anywhere? That he was undeserving of the simple human need for connection, friendship, loyalty? Foggy wishes he knew. Fractured images spin at the back of his mind and he wonders if he already does.

"Sorry I walked out," Foggy says.

Matt lets out a single, choked laugh. "I expected you to." He doesn't lift his head. Even though his eyes don't work, he still doesn't want Foggy to see them, he doesn't want whatever expression he has on his face to be witnessed. "I... when I heard the bus..." his fingers twitch, dance, can't sit still, "...hurt myself coming down. Claire wouldn't let me come see you."

Foggy sighs. He wonders what that was like for Matt, isolated in his apartment, injured, not knowing if his friend was okay. His grip tightens, and Matt tightens it back, but won't look at him. Er, look _toward_ him. "Sorry," Foggy says, and he means it, not just for stepping in front of a damned bus. The rest of it goes unsaid.

"I should be the one apologizing." Matt sniffles and goes from having his head bent to burying his face in the blanket. Hiding. He's good at that. "My fault."

"No, it isn't." Foggy's startled by the fire in his own words. "Dammit, Matt. Stop..." he trails off. "Matt?"

His friend is shuddering, hard and uneven, into the blanket. Won't lift his head. Won't let Foggy see how hard he's crying, but Foggy can tell by the shaking. His mind brings up an image, ghostly, faded, his friend crumbling in a hospital waiting room. What he's seeing now, with his own eyes, is similar, but not.  It feels like a gift from Heaven itself.

"Hey... buddy. It's okay. I'm okay. See?"

Matt doesn't answer, so Foggy takes one of his hands, gently lifts it and places it on his chest. He remembers. _Vibrations, temperatures, sounds, smells._ Matt goes still, so still, except for his fingers, shivering over the hospital gown. Falls silent. Listening.

"See?" Foggy asks again. "We're okay. We made it through. You can feel it, right? My heartbeat."

The answer is hesitant. "...Yes."

"And?"

Matt lifts his head, finally. Of course he was crying, but there's something else there now, playing on the edges of his lips, tightening his eyebrows. "You... you're not lying." He says it with such reverence, like it's the most amazing thing he's ever learned in his life. The smile sneaks all the way across his mouth and goes full-bore into that incredible grin that makes Foggy just want to die.

Well, maybe not _die_. He had a bit too much of that today.

The moment ends too soon, and Matt begrudgingly but gently removes his hand and goes back to cradling Foggy's.

"You're still hungry," he says, and the grin stays on his face, chasing away the last of the tears out of his eyes.

"Well, boot up that nose of yours and let me know what they're cooking today."

Matt lets out a startled, clear, bewildered laugh. Like bells ringing in a church.  Giddy. Nobody's asked him before, given him a chance to openly do one of those _really incredible things_ he can do and he's so enthusiastic that it should be painful, but it isn't at all. He's just grinning, so relieved and ecstatic that it leaks through his expression like a spotlight. Foggy isn't sure he's seen it before. He knows he wants to see it again.

So he gives Matt's hands another squeeze, and smiles, and relaxes into his pillow, and listens to his stupid ( _amazing_ ), idiotic ( _smart motherfucking_ ), stubborn ( _brave, selfless_ ), stupid ( _I fucking love him, god dammit_ ) son of a bitch best friend recite the lunch menu from four floors up.

\---

_Why am I still here?_

Because I'm not going anywhere.

_Why was I ever here?_

Because this is where I belong.

_Why did he lie?_

He was afraid and had every right to be.

_Why did I fall for all of it?_

You didn't. You found out, and you stayed, and that's what really matters.

_Why did he even go into law if this stupid shit was what he wanted to do?_

A promise to a dead father. He kept it.

_Why couldn't he stay away?_

Because he loves me.

_Why couldn't he have just been a normal broken blind guy?_

Because he isn't, and he won't ever be, and I love him anyway, because he loves me. He's mine, and I won't ever let him go.

And Foggy doesn't.

\---

End

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what this is. I have no idea what I'm doing.


End file.
